Pork-Barrel Politics

Updated April 27, 2001 12:01 a.m. ET

T he latest dust-up in British education springs from one chubby five-year-old girl's difficulty climbing from a swimming pool. The headmaster promptly wrote her parents expressing concern for the girl's ample proportions, and offering counseling in fitness and diet.

The letter didn't go down well. "She gets enough stick in the playground because she's quite big," railed her mother. "But you don't expect to cop it from...